Dear Felix,

my mom told me… You have to eat more.. look at urself in that picture you look small. Even my mom comments like that, what makes other people cant comment like that? I’m screwed.

I am sorry that your mother is so insensitive, and she has been like that all along. She has been criticizing you and worrying about you ever since you were a small child. You grew up with a notion that something is wrong with you – your eating habits, your height, your weight… You were never good enough for her. And now you are never good enough for yourself. This is the core of your self-esteem problem.

It really triggers me, and i scream last night…. I really feel like i wanna cry… why do people have to keep embarrassing me like this.

Like really what should i do right, i dont even do anything to embarrass myself and it really cause something to trigger my self-issues.

It’s not people who are embarrassing you – that girl simply posted a group photo, with no intention to hurt you. For you everything is a trigger, even something completely innocent. It’s because of your emotional wound that you react to everything with a sense of doom. You feel like you’re falling apart because you cannot bear the feeling of not being liked. It’s too painful, you don’t want to live with that pain. I understand you.

But the solution is not to isolate yourself completely from people. You could do that only by becoming a monk and living in a far-away monastery, but even then you’d compare yourself with other monks and how they are better than you. You could become a hermit, living alone in the desert. But even then, the thoughts of not being good enough would haunt you…

What I am trying to say is that isolation and running away from people won’t help you. What will help you though is to heal that childhood wound. You’d need to heal that inner child. You need to become a good, positive, encouraging parent to that little boy who was always hearing how weak and insufficient he was.

You have been hearing that something is wrong with you since at least 3 years old, maybe even earlier. And you are still hearing it. Your mother is still making such belittling comments…. And they hurt, because you are still identified with that little boy who wanted his mother to praise him and appreciate him.

For you to heal, you’d need to praise and encourage that little boy. You’d to tell him you love him. You’d need to take him into your arms (in your imagination) and tell him how beautiful and precious he is, and that there is nothing wrong with him. You need to be your own good parent.

This I believe is the way out, the way to truly develop self-esteem.